Re: FreeBSD 6.0 Release - affordable SATA or PATA PCI RAID 5 advice requested

From: Neil Bradley (nb_no_spam_at_synthcom.com)
Date: 11/29/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:53:03 GMT

STREBOR wrote:
> I'm setting up a home server for my video's, photos and music. From spare
> parts I managed to put together a Pentium III machine and installed FreeBSD
> 6.0 Release with samba 3.0.14 (I think).

This sounds very similar to what I'm doing now, though my setup consists
of 10 400 gig SATA drives, and I'm storing all of my DVDs on hard
drives. I've been experimenting with a 6 port controller and 3 drives
and have finally settled on a setup for my FreeBSD 6 box.

> 1200GB of space. I am not too bothered about peak performance as the server
> will be connected to a 100Mbit switched network and 95% of RAID5 traffic
> will be read (so 5% write). I would rather use SATA disks, simply because I
> like the simplicity the cables offer. So far all sounds very simple.

Not to mention the increased airflow.

> I like the idea of hardware based RAID 5. I have messed around with vinum to
> set up a RAID 5 array in the past (on Freebsd 4.x) but never really trusted
> it. When a drive/plex/volume was marked as faulty I didn't really have a
> clue how to reliably rebuild the RAID 5 array. Trust me I searcehd, but
> could not find a "vinum RAID 5 for dummies" manual (anybody have one?).

There are a couple of ways to do this:

1) Reboot to the controller card's BIOS and do a manual rebuild that way
2) Keep a hot spare drive and mark it as such so you can keep running if
one goes bad

How do to it under FreeBSD? I'm not sure - I've not done it.

> I need advice on how to approach the RAID 5 hardware setup. There are a lot
> of controllers out there, but specifications are starting to confuse me. I
> read some reviews of RAID 5 cards, but *of course* all reviews are done
> under Windows. I would rather hear FreeBSD (6.0) users' experiences.

Regarding SATA controllers, a friend who runs Terasolutions has tested a
variety of SATA cards, and let's just say that thorough for him is an
understatement. ;-)

> I was interested in using one of the follwoing cards to setup the RAID 5
> array:
>
> 1. Highpoint RocketRaid 1640 (4x sata) (PCI 32bit/33m=MHz)
> 2. Adaptec 2410SA (4x sata) (PCI 64bit/66MHz.. PCI 2.2)
> 3. 3Ware Escalade 8506-8 (8x sata) (PCI 64bit/33MHz)
>
> Does anybody have a suggestion for another raid5 hardware based controler?
> As far as I have been able to make out, Promise does not really support
> FreeBSD (or vice versa).

I have experience with Promise Parallel ATA RAID controllers like the
TX2/100, but that really doesn't apply here.

My recommendations were to stay away from the Adaptec SATA controllers,
as they performed abysmally under FreeBSD. The top recommendation was
anything made by 3Ware, or more importantly, anything with an LSI SATA
chipset. I'm currently using an Intel 6 port SATA RAID controller SRCS16
(LSI chipset based) and it's working quite well.

But my specific recommendations have been the 3Ware 9500-S12 in terms of
performance and compatability with FreeBSD 6, and that's what I'm going
with for my FreeBSD 6 box.

> Finally, I also read about the ataraid and atacontrol functions, which are
> new to me. Could anybody share their RAID 5 experience here (what card used,
> which mainboard, which FreeBSD version, etc). How do people experience
> ataraid/atacontrol compaired to vinum?

I don't have any experience here to help you out - sorry.

-->Neil

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